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It also ignores easily available solutions that could have been deployed prior to AI

For example, even if it shows a boost of $100,000 per month in revenue. It could likely have been achieved with a shared virtual assistant / receptionist for about $200-1000 per month (depending on exactly call volumes).

So really, the revenue was already lost and going forward you’re just deciding to capture it. You've created a more complicated mouse trap than what was already available to you. The difference is saving a couple hundred dollars of labor less whatever your AI/tech costs are. I’d still go the human route because it’s more future proof and if this is a luxury service, human service is always going to feel more luxurious.

I needed to replace my car's windshield in a hurry while on an extended trip. I called around to see who might have one in stock that could do a rush order. There was one place that had an automated voice system, and I hung up because it kept redirecting the conversation to get me to hand over more information than necessary to answer my question.

If I were already an existing customer and just wanted to schedule an oil change, it'd be fine, though I'd probably just schedule on the website anyway. I'm really only going to call in if I have an unusual circumstance and actually need to speak with someone.

Also I bet the LLM didn't speak too fast, enunciate unclearly, have a busted and crackly headset obscuring every other word it said to you, or have an accent that you struggled to understand either.

I was on the wrong end of some (presumably) LLM powered support via ebay's chatbot earlier this week and it was a completely terrible experience. But that's because ebay haven't done a very good job, not because the idea of LLM-powered support is fundamentally flawed.

When implemented well it can work great.

I had a similar situation with a chatbot: I posted a highly technical question, got a very fast reply with mostly correct data. Asked a follow-up question, got a precise reply. Asked to clarify something, got a human-written message (all lowercase, very short, so easy to distinguish from the previous LLM answers).

Unfortunately, the human behind it was not technically-savvy enough to clarify a point, so I had to either accept the LLM response, or quit trying. But at least it saved me the time from trying to explain to a level 1 support person that I knew exactly what I was asking about.

My big question is. Why has the company and their development process failed so horribly they need to use LLM instead the app? Surely app could implement everything LLM can too.

Amazon support does this pretty well with their chat. The agent can pull all the relevant order details before the ticket hits a human in the loop, who appears to just be a sanity check to approve a refund or whatever. Real value there.

Agreed; they're far better than the old style robots, which is what you'd have to deal with otherwise.

More generally, when done well, RAG is really great. I was recently trying out a new bookkeeping software (manager.io), and really appreciated the chatbot they've added to their website. Basically, instead of digging through the documentation and forums to try to find answers to questions, I can just ask. It's great.

Yep probably. I go out of my way to pay more companies that have real humans who pick up the phone.

If my mechanic answered with an LLM I’d take my car elsewhere.

What could the LLM be doing that wasn't possible inside the app? At the end of the day, the LLM is just making an API call to whatever system needed to be updated anyway, that could have just been a button in an app.

Just to be clear, the LLM assistant could be a great supplement to the app for people with disabilities or those who struggle with phone apps for whatever reason, but for most people the LLM phone call seems worse.

The LLM is just calling APIs though, if the LLM can do it then it should be exposed to the user. Why have the middleman.

i genuinely don't get the point of this. isn't it easier to have a native chat interface? phone is a much worse UX and we simply use it because of the assumption that a human is behind it. once that assumption doesn't hold - phone based help has no place here.

Never mind an outsourced receptionist, some of those calls could be handled simply by the mailbox. Of course, some people will hang up once the mailbox message starts - but then again, some will also hang up once they realize they're talking to an AI chatbot, so...

Plus if he’s too slammed to answer the phone he’s too slammed to take on the missing work, most likely.

I have a friend who runs a trade with an outsourced reception - they employ 3 full time people and the reception is about £150/mo for 9-5 manning of calls. He does the scheduling in the evenings.

If we take OP’s post at face value, presumably his brother is already at 100% capacity otherwise he wouldn’t be missing all these calls.

A good 'Service Writer' (the term you use for this job) isn't cheap and typically aren't outsourced. Usually because your (local) competition is going to be using them too. And also because customers aren't going to trust a person that is writing service for multiple shops.

That said, a good service writer is worth their weight in gold. Also, they are typically going to be the person you end up selling the business to when you retire. Most mechanics aren't good enough at the business side of things to actually buy, but service writers are.

The ROI is whatever the blog is advertising for -- AI training courses and such.

> That’s a lost job — sometimes a $450 brake service, sometimes a $2,000 engine repair

Christ just hire some local teenager or whomever. There's people who will work for minimum wage.

I recently fired a plumber I was trying to contract for a five figure remodel job because his AI receptionist couldn't understand my address and therefore could not schedule the appointment. After that experience, I will not use a contractor that I cannot personally get in touch with until these systems improve demonstrably.

It most likely isn't, but it seems like this project was more for learning purposes than for anything else. In that case, why not go for the "production-ready", "highly scalable" solution? I sometimes do the same for my personal projects. I over-architect them not because it's necessary, but because I want to get my hands dirty and learn something new.

Yeah, just stuff the entire website and pricing table into the context window.

Yeah, this architecture is completely unnecessary.

Completely agree. I think the whole thing can fit in context.

I think the biggest thing is to not give it access to anything like a shell (obviously), limit the call length, and give it a hangup command.

Then you tell it to just not answer off the wall questions etc. and if you are using a good model it will resist casual attempts.

I don't see being able to ask nonsense questions as being a big deal for an average small business. But you could put a guardrail model in front to make it a lot harder if it was worth it.

For some, that's a feature https://programmerhumor.io/python-memes/chipotle-support-bot...

in general these types of attacks are still difficult to solve, because there are a lot of different ways they can be formulated. llm based security is still and unknown, but mostly i have seen people using intermediary steps to parse question intent and return canned responses if the question seems outside the intended modality.

You would probably hang up if it went to voicemail too so the net loss is 0

I've been car shopping recently, and it took me a full week to realize that every dealership I'd talked to had an LLM with a fake name handling customer intake. I was 4 emails deep with one before I stopped to think about how plausible their near-instant response times were.

I assume people are pissed off because its building something that people already hate and its a fully AI generated post that is jarring to read.

Nothing pisses people off faster than calling up and getting put on the line with a robot. Like if we're thinking about this problem and how to solve it we can look at other examples like a website with a booking form,call the mechanics cell directly, hire a receptionist or worst case outsource the receptionist to a booking agency.

The site is selling SaaS templates and AI courses. The post is just an ad for whatever services it is offering...

The poster has built something that, while technically interesting, is profoundly annoying as a user and deserves to be backlashed to prevent more of this kind of stuff to be built

Just how much effort even went into this? The project is LLM generated, the blog post is LLM generated. It produced something that is really annoying to deal with as a consumer. The last thing I want to talk with when calling a boutique garage is some AI receptionist.

Why should people be impressed by this?

It's also just easier. When I needed a service for my car (and I didn't already have an established shop where to take it), I just wrote what I was looking for once and emailed the same thing to multiple different places at once.

If I had to call four different places and spend five minutes on the phone with each shop, that'd eat up my entire lunch time.

It means luxury car brands, not luxury service. This is right in the post.

I assume the Op, being a programmer and not a car mechanic, just assumed they mean the same thing.

The entire discussion here about how AI undercuts luxury brands has absolutely nothing to do with the actual post.

> No idea what `luxury` is doing here, but if I get an LLM receptionist, that ain't it.

Bingo.

You can't get away with AI slop in a service oriented for wealthy customers.

The day my dealership starts answering me with AI they lose a customer 100%.

This solution screams "built by a tech bro with no idea about economics and marketing" which is the VC playbook into modernizing (and failing) businesses they don't understand.

They said they are using VAPI which is 100% cloud service providers.

He literally explained why within the first paragraphs, because a stock LLM can answer a different price of the shop for a given repair

Great point.

How are they measuring the success rate? It seems like a project like this is a great time to dive into the problem and define the parameters of success. If only to inform how you design the ai’s presentation of the shop. Ie. how quickly does it get customer’s profile and discover their issue.

Thinking about my experiences with mechanics shops—with the exception of dealerships and larger operations—if you’re talking to a principal, the conversation is brief. It’s possible customers will respond positively if the bot is effective for scheduling and if the price communicated by phone, and the final price are somehow aligned to expectations.

If it’s anything like talking to ChatGPT via voice they’d definitely notice. And if it has anything like the failure modes it does, the OP’s brother is going to eat into a lot of the cost savings he’d get (vs using a human receptionist or even an outsourced receptionist) dealing with fires like the AI said my car would absolutely be done today.

I was agreeing with all the nay-saying comments, but yours made me see the idea as good. I guess the word "luxury" ruined it for OP.

But a speech-to-text and text-to-speech system that I know is "understanding" me would be great rather than waiting music. The shop could even sell it as "As a small shop, most of our employees are busy fixing cars, so we are using AI to help with calls" (Although then people who are anxious about AI stealing jobs might hang up). The robot can ask me what I need, and then say "So for [this service], the price would be..." (to tell the caller what it has understood).

If the AI can even look at gaps in the shop's schedule and set an appointment time, the customer might even be happy that they just spent a minute on the phone instead of 10+...

brutal market for lemons: the last 100 times they heard robovoice on the phone they had a terrible experience, and any money you spend fixing this is wasted because the customer cant tell your robovoice is actually honest and capable of making commitments because they all sound perfectly confident and correct even the ones who know nothing and will promise anything

I have low standards for the general population but virtually everyone knows the difference between an automated bot and human being on the phone.

That made me laugh a bit as well. Definitely want to see some rigorous testing on that, I'd expect that on longer calls tha caller can make the ai say basically anything.

Even at a barebones mechanic shop, I'd wave goodbye and go search one with humans at the reception.